


All Mimsy were the Borogoves

by Echinoderma



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Mild Gore, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-28
Updated: 2011-10-28
Packaged: 2017-10-25 00:42:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/269759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Echinoderma/pseuds/Echinoderma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave and Rose ask Terezi to dispose of evidence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Mimsy were the Borogoves

**Author's Note:**

> Man, what is writing even.

                In the lantern light, Dave thinks, Terezi looks like a wild animal, the soft yellow catching on the rough slate of her skin and the glistening white of her teeth. By his side, Rose is like a still like a Greek statue, her stoic exterior betrayed only by the thin sheen of sweat that slicks her marble skin. It's a new moon tonight, the forest pitch-black in the spaces the lantern doesn't reach, and Dave stands, half- illuminated, lantern in one hand, and a writhing, squealing bundle in the other. The infant's wails echo in the labyrinth of foliage; Dave has to stop himself from trying to sooth it into a state of silence.

                He doesn't visit Terezi much; he tells himself it's because she lives with the bandersnatches, the proverbial jabberwocky in the woodlands. The real reason, though, it that she sees too much of him, knows him too thoroughly, and after so long his vorpal blade fails to make her head go snicker-snack. Years of verbal sparring left her privy to his style, his form, and she knows when to rise to the bait, when he's lying like he wants to bury the entire forest in bullshit, when he's baring his lily-white soul to her deadly devil's grip.  She doesn't flash them her signature smirk as he and Rose appear in the darkness; perhaps even she can tell that this is no ordinary booty call.

                "Dave. Rose."

                A younger Terezi would have rolled the vowels in her throat; the very utterance of his name a challenge. The years had tempered her frenetic passions into a focused point, the end of a rapier, the piercing canines of a snarling predator. Dave felt his heart doing back flips in his chest, straining against his ribs. He is both relieved and surprised when it is Rose who first replies, in a voice sharp enough to draw blood.

                "We want you to do something for us."

                She stalks over to them, folding her arms across her chest. Her proximity causes the baby's shrill screams to subside. She- it- gazes at the knife-sharp outline of the alien before it, drooping eyes trying and failing to bring her image into focus. Its lipless mouth forms into a rounded 'o' of interest, and it waves its tiny limbs towards Terezi, the malformed fingers on its right hand miming the act of grasping, the left arm ending in a smooth, rounded, shapeless lump of flesh.

                Dave inhales, the barest tremor running through his lungs, as his gut churns and the entirety of his digestive tract threatens to crawl out of his ass.

                "We need you to get rid of this"

                Terezi looks between them, the beginnings of a laughing fit burbling from her concave belly. She throws her head back as she howls with laughter, shoulders shaking, the forest ringing with the hysterical twang of her voice. The baby in Dave's arms coos in tandem, mouth trying to approximate a smile. Dave jerks so badly he drops the lantern,  and they are enveloped in the inky black of the night, infinite and all-consuming; Dave is hyper aware as Terezi steps even closer, her hyena cries subsiding into a low, continuous chortle. She touches the child's cheek with the tip of her index finger, and Dave can imagine the curved ends of her talons making the slightest indents in the down-soft skin.

                "And how, exactly, do you want me to dispose of your raspberry and lavender lovespawn _, hmm, Dave?"_

                "It needs to be-" His mouth moves wordlessly as his voice catches in his throat "-untraceable. The informant in the east river untraceable, the body in the concrete floor no one knows about. You, me, Rose; we were never here, that kind of untraceable."

                Terezi's mouth slides into a shark grin, lips pulled grotesquely over her fangs.

                "Don't worry coolkid, I got it."

                Terezi relieves him of the bundle in his arms and Dave feels the absence of weight as keenly as the loss of a limb. His other senses strain to compensate for his sight, and suddenly he is aware of the earthy scent of the woods, the twigs snapping beneath his feet, the ragged noise of his breath exiting his lungs. He hears Rose's muffled cry beside him, and he gropes wildly in the darkness until he catches her hand and intertwines their fingers. Terezi is mumbling softly to the child in the low, consonant-laden tones of Alternian; Dave can only imagine the Terezi of his youth, edged like obsidian glass as she plays with her food before devouring it whole.

                In that way, she has not changed

                The soft, wet sound of broken babybone hits Dave's ears and he doubles over like a spindly scarecrow, hands slammed over his ears to block the deafening screech that follows immediately after. It's like a railroad spike to the head, a red-hot poker to the chest as the baby screams like a seal pup in the jaws of a Great White Shark, capitalized because that's a title not an animal, Terezi is all three rows of serrated teeth covered in rough sandpaper scales as she tears through white skin masking red flesh (her favorite, remember?) , reveling in the wailing and the gnashing of teeth. Rose kneels next to him- when did he end up on the ground?- and cradles his head against her chest, and Dave feels sick sick sick to his stomach as Rose's sobs mingle with the pained and panicked infant cries. He wants to get up and slam his fist through Terezi's jaw, make her bleed bright teal against the mossy forest floor. He wants to bang his head against the gnarled surface of the tree next to him, the wood granite hard under his skull as he beats himself into a coma.  He wants to go back, rewind, find out this is a doomed timeline and _ha-ha joke's on you this is when you die-_ scratch the game and start anew- but Sburb ended years ago and his powers with it; he knows that he does not have that luxury anymore.

                A wet squelch sounds in the air, the screams dying to low, gurgling exhales and Dave falls out of Rose's hold and vomits, endlessly, a stream of bile steaming on the decaying leaves and the moist dirt of the ground. He is wracked with dry heaves, chest burning as his lungs try futilely to draw in precious breath but he can't, he can't, he feels like his body is trying to turn itself inside out to escape the ghastly, abhorrent noise emanating from the once lively being in Terezi's arms. 

                Terezi gives a low groan of pleasure, and Dave screams, screams until all he can hear is the rattle in his throat and all he can feel is the nausea of oxygen-deprivation. Rose's nails draw blood against his forearm, long, jagged lines of _red_ appearing on his fair skin _._

                The harrowing screech in the air is suddenly silenced, Dave is left only with the high-pitched ring in his ears and the slurp of Terezi licking her fingers clean. He feels like a quadruple amputee, arms numb and legs turned to jelly as he kowtows for his sins. Rose presses her face into the crease of his spine as she tenses against him. The atmosphere is taut, resentment strung between them like tripwires. Terezi regards the pair with bemusement; the bitter, acrid taste of their grief like charcoal on her tongue, a stark contrast to the delicate softness of the helpless human grub she had just finished.

                Once, she would have left with a barbed insult, fantastical metaphors doing nothing to soften the serrated edges of her cutting remarks. Today, Terezi merely turns on her heel, the soft rustle of dry leaves the only sound she leaves in her wake.

                Dave contorts into a sitting position with Rose's assistance; they end up slumped against the adjacent tree, shuddering. He turns into her, burying his face in the smooth skin of her neck as she winds an arm around his shoulders.

 

                They don't move for a long time.

 


End file.
